ARTURO M. TOLENTINO, PETITIONER, VS. COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS, AND THE CHIEF ACCOUNTANT, THE AUDITOR, AND THE DISBURSING OFFICER OF THE 1971 CONSTITU­TIONAL CONVENTION, RESPONDEN…

Submitted for resolution are the motion for reconsideration of
the decision of this Court in this case, filed by the intervenors
and adopted by respondent Com­mission on Elections, and the other motion to the
same effect and practically on the same grounds of the re­spondents Chief
Accounting Officer and Auditor of the Constitutional Convention of 1971, both
seasonably answered by petitioner.

The decision sought to be reconsidered holds as null and void
Organic Resolution No. 1 of the Conven­tion which proposes the amendment of
Section 1 of Art­icle V of the Constitution by reducing the age require­ment
for voters therein from 21 to 18 years, “without prejudice to other
amendments that will he proposed in the future by the 1971 Constitutional
Convention on other portions of the amended section or on other portions of the
entire Constitution”, and provides further that said proposed amendment
shall be submitted for ratification or rejection by the people in a plebiscite
to be held coincident with the forthcoming election of senators and local officials
on November 8, 1971, and finally appropriates part of the funds of the Conven­tion
for the purpose.  In brief, the said
decision is based on the ground that, having in view the obvious reasons
underlying the provisions of Section 1 of Art­icle XV of the Constitution which
prescribe the proce­dure of amending the fundamental law, aside, of course,
from the ordinary import of its language, the Court is convinced that said
provisions do not permit the hold­ing of more than one “election” or
plebiscite for the submission to the people of any and all of the amend­ments
to be proposed by the present convention and this, We say, is without
considering anymore the fact that the proposed amendment in question is
expressly saddled with reservations which naturally impair, in great measure,
its very essence as a proposed constitutional amendment.

Reconsideration of this decision is now sought on the following
grounds:

(1)  That inasmuch as Congress, acting as a consti­tuent
assembly, can submit to a plebiscite, whether, singly or together, the
constitutional amendments it may propose, the Convention being at par
with such con­stituent assembly must also be considered as having such power;

(2)  That the phrase “at an election” in
Section 1 of Article XV of the Constitution does not necessarily mean only one
plebiscite but may be construed as signi­fying several plebiscites, because
there is jurispru­dence holding that a word in singular in a statute or
constitution may be understood in the plural;

(3)  That the question of whether or not the
Convention should submit the amendments it may propose in a single plebiscite
or otherwise is a matter that goes in­to the wisdom of the action of the
Convention rather than to its authority or power, hence outside the pale of judicial
review;

(4)  And that, in relation to the point in the deci­sion
to the effect that the proposed amendment in ques­tion regarding the reduction
of the voting age in the Philippines has no frame of reference on which the
voters at the projected plebiscite may base their judgment as to its
acceptability, there is no need of such frame of re­ference because the
proposed amendment “is a simple fix­ing (lowering) of the minimum voting
age from 21 to 18,” and “it is difficult to conceive of any possible
future amendments where (sic) this fixed voting age could be out of tune”
and hard to “imagine how this amendment on this minimum voting age could
conceivably be better understood if presented together with the various sub­stantial
and fundamental amendments in the whole draft when concluded.”

The rest of the motion of intervenors
deals with the additional arguments discussed in the separate con­curring
opinion of Justices J. B. L. Reyes, Zaldivar, Castro
and Makasiar.

After full and serious consideration of the above grounds and the
arguments adduced in support thereof, together with the answer thereto of
petitioner, the Court does not find sufficient cause to alter or modify its rul­ings
on the points covered by the motions for reconsider­ation.  Ironically for respondents and intervenors, as will be presently demonstrated, the points
now being raised by them serve to reenforce rather
than to destroy the bases of said rulings.

Importantly, before discussing the arguments of the parties, it
is well to emphasize that respondents and in­tervenors
impliedly, if not expressly, admit now that the provisions of Section 1 of
Article XV of the Constitution, dealing with the procedure or manner of
amending the fun­damental law, are binding upon the Convention and the other
departments of the government.  It must
be added that, as well pointed out by petitioner in his answer to the motions
for reconsideration, they are no less binding upon the people.  The preamble of the Constitution says that
the Constitution has been ordained by the “Filipino people, imploring the
aid of Divine Providence.” Section 1 of Article XV is nothing more than a
part of the Constitution thus ordained by the people.  Hence, in con­struing said section, We must read it as if the people had said, “This
Constitution may he amended, but it is our will that the amendment must be
proposed and submitted to Us for ratification only in the manner herein
provided.” This is not to say that the people may not, in the exer­cise of
their inherent revolutionary powers, amend the Constitution or promulgate an
entirely new one otherwise, but as long as any amendment is formulated and
submitted under the aegis of the present Charter, any resolution for the
submission of any such amendment which is not in confor­mity with the letter,
spirit and intent of the provisions of the Charter for effecting amendments,
cannot receive the sanction of this Court. 
Accordingly, the real issue here cannot be whether or not the amending
process delineated by the present Constitution may be disregarded in favor of
allowing the sovereign people to express their decision on the proposed
amendments, if only because it is evident that the very idea of departing from
the fundamental law is ana­chronistic in the realm of constitutionalism and
repugnant to the essence of the rule of law; rather, it is whether or not the
provisional nature of the proposed amendment and the manner of its submission
to the people for rati­fication or rejection conform with the mandate of the
peo­ple themselves in such regard, as expressed in the Consti­tution
itself.  In other words, the inescapable
function of the Court in this case is to determine what is
the pro­per construction of Section 1 of Article XV, and, corolla­rily, to declare whether CC Organic Resolution No.
1 falls within or without said construction.

As already stated, movants claim that
inasmuch as Congress, as a constituent assembly, has the power to submit
amendments proposed by it in a piece-meal manner for ratification, it follows
that the Convention, which is at par with said assembly, also has such
power.  The fault in this posture lies in
the simple fact that the factual truth and legal correctness of its major
premise are assumed, and it happens that after mature study, We
find that said premise suffers from inaccuracy, factual­ly and legally.

To begin with, in trying to draw a parallelism bet­ween the
Convention, on the one hand, and the Congress, as a constituent assembly, on
the other, movants would ignore, at the same time,
the distinction, between Congress as the Legislature and Congress acting in its
capacity as a, constituent body. Although Congress as the Legislature is a
continuing body, factually and in contemplation of law, it is not so whenever
it sits in its capacity as a constituent assembly.  In the latter instance, its juridical
existence as such is coextensive only with the legal duration of the joint
session assembled to perform any particular work of proposing amendments to the
Constitution. Each of such joint sessions ad­journs finally after it has
approved its proposal or proposals and becomes functus
officio thereafter in order to give way to the submission of its
proposal or proposals to the people. In the juridical sense, each such joint
session is a constitutional convention in it­self, distinct and separate from
the others of similar nature, and may be distinguished from the convention per
se, like the current one, only in that the latter is constituted upon the
election of delegates by the people, whereas the constituent assembly of
Congress constitutes itself upon mere concurrent resolution of the two Houses
to such effect passed by simple majority vote of the respective members
thereof.  Consequently, while Congress
may easily reconvene as another constituent body after it has finally adjourned
as such, from the very nature of its existence, such cannot be done by a
convention, since in the case of the latter, a new call for election of
delegates who would compose a new Constitutional Convention would be needed.

It can thus be seen that the submission by Con­gress of proposed
amendments after each final adjourn­ment of its joint constituent session, and
not before such adjournment, is conclusive proof, not of the legal possibility
of piece-meal submission of proposed amend­ments to the people by Congress,
but, on the contrary, of the validity of the proposition that the constituent
assembly has to become functus officio
first before the Constitutional amendments it proposes may be submitted to the
people for ratification.  Indeed, the
holding of a plebiscite only after every joint constituent session of Congress
has already approved all its proposed amendments to the Constitution is not in
any sense a piece-meal submission of such amendments, but rather the whole­sale
submission thereof, since they would be all that the particular assembly
approving them wants to propose, irrespective of their actual number, whether
one or more than one.

Petitioner’s well-reasoned discussion of this point, albeit
confined to theoretical rationalization, could sufficiently refute movants‘ contentions, but a little bit of historical
exposition should serve to lay the matter in issue at rest on more solid
ground.  Incident ally, in the same
manner that movants have not cited any specific
factual basis for their pose, petitioner’s answer is silent as to the facts
extant in the Congressional records relative to the important issue under
discussion.

What do the congressional records reveal in his regard?

Since its ratification on May 14, 1935, the Philip­pine
Constitution has been amended three times, not counting, of course, the
unsuccessful attempt in that direction caused by the rejection by the people of
the two amendments proposed by the constituent Congress in 1967.  These amendments were approved in 1939, 1940
and 1947.

On August 7, 1939, the Congress of the United States passed the Tydings-Koscialkowski Bill providing for terms of the trade
relation between the United States and the Philippines purportedly improving
those contained in the Philippine Independence Act and requir­ing that, in
order that said terms may become effective on January 1, 1940, the ordinance
appended to the Cons­titution should be correspondingly amended to include them
not later than January 1, 1940.  In the
meanwhile, earlier in the same year 1939, agitations had started already for
the possible extension of the term of Pre­sident Quezon
which was to expire, under the original Constitution, in 1941.  The idea snowballed steadily, such that in
the convention of the Nacionalista Party assembled on
July 7 and 8, 1939, it was resolved to request the National Assembly to meet as
a constituent body to propose three amendments to the Constitution,
namely:  (1) to change the term of the
President from six years without reelection to four years with one re­election;
(2) to restore the bicameral system of legis­lature; and (3) to establish a
constitutional commis­sion on elections. Taking advantage of the approval of the
Tydings-Koscialkowski Act on August 8, 1939, Presi­dent Quezon
called the National Assembly to a special session purposely to consider
proposals to amend the Constitution, not only to comply with the said American
law but also to act on the request contained in the above-mentioned resolution
of the Nacionalista Party convention.  The response of the National Assembly was
rather fast.  On September 15, 1939, all four proposed amendments
were approved in two separate resolutions, Nos. 38 and 39, (a) the proposed
amendment of the Or­dinance being embodied in Resolution No. 39 and (b)
the three other proposals for amendment of the Constitution in
Resolution No. 38. Four days later, on Sep­tember 19, 1939, the National
Assembly, acting this time as the Legislature, approved Commonwealth Act 492,
providing for the submission of the foregoing approved proposals to amend the
Constitution to the people in two separate plebiscites, (a) Resolution No. 39
in the first to be held on October 24, 1939 and (b) Resolution No. 38 in the
second scheduled to coincide with the following election of local officials in
1940.  However, inasmuch as strong public
opinion developed against the submittal of the three amendments proposed in
Resolution No. 38 in one single question, the National Assembly had to recon­vene
as a constituent body to make the corresponding chan­ges in the wording of the
proposals in such a way that the three proposed amendments could be embodied in
three sepa­rate questions and thereby make it possible for any of them to be
accepted or rejected independently of any of the other two.  Thus on April 11, 1940, the amendatory Resolution No. 73 was
approved, and shortly thereafter, the Legislature enacted Commonwealth Act 517
correspondingly amending Com­monwealth Act 492 and advancing at the same time
the second plebiscite to June 18, 1940.  The three amendment proposals were all
ratified at this plebiscite.  In the
meanwhile the proposed amendment of the Ordinance to the Constitution proposed
in Resolution No. 39 was ratified by the people on the previously scheduled
plebiscite on October 24, 1939.^[1]

The third amendment ratified on March 11, 1947 was in connection with the added provision
of the Ordinance appen­ded to the Constitution granting parity rights to the Ame­ricans.

In this historical account, it does appear that fact­ually, the
National Assembly sought to submit several pro­posed amendments approved by it
in a single session as a constituent body separately or “piece-meal”
in two separate plebiscites or elections a little reflection will reveal that
what actually happened in 1939 cannot be invoked to justify the proposed
plebiscite now in question.

In Our decision, We held that the legal
objection to a piece-meal submission of the proposed amendment is that it does
not provide the people with a frame of re­ference on the basis of which they
can determine the acceptability of the proposal.  More specifically, since the proposed
reduction of the voting age to eight­een years cannot apply to the forthcoming
election, of November 8, 1971 and could hardly have any relevance to the
framework and principles of the present Constitu­tion, considering that these
are precisely being the subject also of proposed changes in the Convention, the
result is that the proposed amendment is completely an isolated one which
cannot even be related to the amend­ed or new constitution which the Convention
will pro­pose, for the simple reason that, as things now stand in the
Convention; no one can foretell what shape, color or size the other amendments
will have.  Moreover, as indicated in Our
decision, and as thoroughly dis­cussed in the deliberations of the Court,
properly ana­lyzed, the proposed amendment in question cannot in truth be
considered as a complete one, but merely as a fractional, provisional and
incomplete proposal that hardly qualifies to be a part of the fundamental law
of the land, which is the embodiment of permanence, defi­niteness, security and
stability in all that it embra­ces, for the better protection and enjoyment of
all the people under it, considering that the proposed amend­ment is coupled
with express and implied reservations,^[2]
the specific extent and magnitude of which are not pos­sible to define, delimit
and delineate, on the basis of what appears on the face of the Convention’s
reso­lution, in a manner that would give the voter a clear and definite idea of
what the exact amendment would lat­er on turn out to be, and thus enable him to
make an intelligent decision, which is what the Constitution con­templates as
indispensable in any plebiscite for the amendment thereof.

All these shortcomings were absent in the 1939 proposals.  To begin with, there was no idea then of
completely overhauling the Constitution outside of the specific areas of the
presidency, Congress and the Commission on Elections covered by amendatory
Resolution No. 73. Consequently, the existing Constitution was readily the
frame of reference of all the proposed amendments, which could, therefore, be
studied and judged in the light of the other parts of the whole
Constitution.  Secondly, all the proposed
amendments then were complete and in final form before they were submitted to
the people, unlike the one here in ques­tion which, as already discussed, is
fractional and conditional.  Thirdly, the
proposed amendment related to the Ordinance appended to the Constitution was no
less than an ineluctable imposition of the sovereign power, the United States
of America, which imposition, if not yielded to, would cost the loss of
preferential treatment of our country in the American trade market, something
which our leaders at that time considered, rightly, or, wrongly, as essential
to our national eco­nomy.  Indeed, in a
sense, it was psychologically de­sirable that said imposition was separated
from the op­tional proposals to avoid mistaking the latter as being also
obligatory.  Besides, there was the
element of time; the United States Congress gave the Philippines only up to
January 1, 1940 to accept its offer of pre­ferential treatment; upon the other
hand, more time was needed by the people to distill the effects and
implications of the optional proposed amendments and the wise leaders of the
country knew that, under the circumstan­ces, it was only fair and proper that
the people be given sufficient opportunity to study them.  Further­more, in another sense, the
submission of the amendment to the Ordinance might have been considered a
formality because the American Government then still retained some measure of
sovereignty over the Philippines.

Withal, looking at the matter from an alternative point of view,
it can even be said that, in effect, the scheduling of the second plebiscite in
Commonwealth Act 492 was reconsidered in favor of another separate cons­tituent
session of the National Assembly which in actuality convened and forthwith
approved Resolution No. 73 which became the one submitted for the ratification
of the people on June 18, 1940 by virtue of the provi­sions of a law other than
Commonwealth Act 492, namely, Commonwealth Act 517.  In other words, it can be said that
Resolution No. 38 was abandoned and in a different constituent assembly,
Amendatory Resolution No. 73 was approved. 
Clearly, therefore, what happened in 1939 does not detract from the
premises of Our decision in this case, nor has it
established any precedent which can justifiably apply to the background
circumstances of this case in the sense movants would
perchance have such 1939 events understood.

It may be stated, at this juncture, that the real lessons from
the above chapter of our Constitutional history seem to have escaped the intervenors.  As
already observed, We did hold two separate plebiscites
for the ratification of several amendments apparently proposed by the same
constituent assembly, but it should be emphasized that, as explained above,
Resolution No. 38 of the first assembly was disregarded and a new assembly
approved Resolution No. 73, on the basis of which the June 18, 1940 plebiscite was set.  In any event, when the two plebiscites were
scheduled or set all the amendments had already been approved in defi­nite and
final form, hence the frame of reference of the people was likewise already
fixed and clear, i.e., not only the other parts of the existing Constitution
but also the proposed amendments taken toge­ther and in relation to each
other.  Thus, in the view of some members
of the Court, this writer included, articulated and discussed during the
deliberations, the cause for the participation of the eighteen-year-olds in the
plebiscite or election for the ratification of the amendatory Constitution to
be proposed by the Con­vention is not precluded by the decision in this case,
much less lost.  Said justices have
expressed the opi­nion that once the Convention has completed all its work on
the whole constitution, this proposal to allow the eighteen-year-olds to vote
in the ratification plebiscite may be included among the transitory provi­sions
thereof and a special advance plebiscite may be held for the sole purpose of
submitting this particular transitory provision in favor of the eighteen­-year-olds
for approval or rejection ahead of the main body of the new Constitution or the
rest of the pro­posed final amendments to be approved by the Conven­tion.  In such an event, according to this view, the
frame of reference would already be clear, and in that sense, the advance
plebiscite can no longer be considered as piece-meal within the contemplation
of Section 1, Article XV of the Constitution.

In this connection, the writer of this opinion recalls that under
the second sentence of Section 1 of Article V of the Constitution as approved
on February 8, 1935, woman suffrage was to be allowed by law only if in a
plebiscite which shall be held within two years after the adoption of the
Constitution, that is, after its ratification by the people, not less than
three hundred thousand women possessing the necessary qualifications should
vote in its favor.  This means that in a
sense, there were actually two plebiscites held separately to ratify the
Constitution, the first to approve or reject the whole of it and the second, to
ratify the extension of woman suffrage, albeit the latter was participated in only by women.  Otherwise stated, it is not strange that a
particular provision of the Constitution is submitted to the people separately
from the whole, provided the latter is already complete.

Further, those of Us holding the view
just dis­cussed, see no constitutional objection to the Con­vention itself
fixing the dates of the respective plebiscites. 
While no definite consensus has been reached yet as to whether the rest
of the amendment process is exclusively within the legislative juris­diction of
Congress or belongs concurrently to the Convention and Congress, because some
justices do not see the necessity of deciding said issue here, the Court is
unanimous in not seeing any reason for apprehension of failure in the funding
of a separate plebiscite or of any plebiscite, for that matter, even if it were
held that the power belongs exclu­sively to Congress.^[3]
The Court does not share the argument of distrust in the sense of duty and
respon­sibility of Congress which movants so heavily
rely upon, even if this were conceived, as it must be, in the interest of the
independence of the Convention.

The reason for this position of the Court is simple. In the main,
the organic part of the Consti­tution has, by necessity, to allocate powers and
du­ties among the different departments, branches and offices of the
government.  These powers are stated
either in black and white in its provisions or are necessarily inferable therefrom.  In the
legal sense, the definition and allocation are made by the people.  It is neither reasonable nor fair to assume
that any of the departments, branches, or offices upon which any duties afire
imposed by the Constitution would ignore and evade the mandate of the
people.  In their motion for
reconsideration, movants give assurances that if this
Court should recognize some powers as belonging to the Convention, the high
sense of re­sponsibility of its members will not permit the abusive exercise of
said powers.  This the Court readily
concedes, but at the same time, the Court feels it cannot concede any less to
the other depart­ments of the government. 
Here, as in any other constitutional democracy, as contrasted to a
totalitarian or authoritarian government, every department must ne­cessarily
rely not only on its powers and indepen­dence but also on its interdependence
upon and the sense of duty and responsibility of the other depart­ments.

In the words of this Court in Abueva
vs. Wood, 45 Phil. 612:

“x x x If the
Courts could in­tervene in the administration of the other independent
departments of government, or vice versa, they would break away from those
checks and balances of government which are meant, under our system of
government, to be checks of cooperation and not of antagonism or mastery, and
would concentrate in their own hands something, at least, of the power which
the people, either di­rectly or by the action of their representatives, decided
to entrust to the other departments of the government.  Under the form of govern­ment established by
the United States
in the Philippine Islands, one department of the government has no power or
authority to inquire into the acts of another, which acts are performed within
the discretion of the other department. 
The absur­dity of any other rule is manifest upon the slightest
meditation.  The judicial and executive
and legisla­tive departments of government are distinct and independent, and
neither is responsible to the other for the performance of its duties, and nei­ther
can enforce the performance of the duties of the other.  The dangers and difficulties which would grow
out of the adoption of a contrary rule would be destructive of the harmonious
relations of the differ­ent departments of government, and lead to confusion
and disorder.  Each of the three
departments of government has separate and dis­tinct functions to perform.  No one department of the government can or
ever has claimed a greater zeal than the others in its desire to promote the
welfare of the individual citizen and to protect his rights. No one department
of the government can claim that it has a monopoly of these benign purposes of
the government.”

Thus, Congress would be inutile with its power to appropriate
unless the Executive can be relied upon to disburse the appropriated sums; the
Executive would be helpless in issuing orders the other officials will not give
effect to; even this Court would better not exist if it cannot depend on the
Executive to enforce its decisions and the Congress to abide by its inter­pretation
and construction of the laws and the Consti­tution.  In other words, as this Court has already re­peatedly
held, in earlier decisions, and as movants themselves
posit, the possibility of abuse is no rea­son for the denial of power.  Briefly then, whether it is the Convention or
the Congress that should appro­priate the funds for the plebiscite, there is no
cause to fear there would be failure in that respect.

Less concern should there be according to the same justices,
about the apparent hugeness of the amount needed for a plebiscite separate from
an election of officials whether local or national.  Granted the importance of giving the youth of
the country a more meaningful participation in the exercise of the people’s
sovereign power in step with other nations of the world, it is a matter of
public knowledge that bigger amounts have been spent or thrown to waste for
many lesser objectives.  All previous
plebiscites for the ratification of the proposed constitutional amendments have
almost invariably been held separately from such elections, mid in the solitary
case when Congress provided for coincidence, six members of this Court, only
two short of the required constitutional number, voted to declare the practice
unconstitutional.^[4]
Surely, the amount of seventeen million pesos or even more is not too much a
price to pay for fealty and loyalty to the Constitution and the cause movants and many other segments of the country are so
assiduously espousing. Withal, consideration should also be give to the fact
that even some members of the Convention have gone on record as to their doubts
on whether or not there is sufficient time by November 8, 1971 for our people
to study seriously and adequately the pro­posed amendments, even as they
complained of the many short cuts and virtual “log rolling” procedure
adopt­ed within the Convention in the course of the passage of, the resolution
in question, not to mention the apprehension, not without basis, that the
manner in which Comelec is undertaking its
constitutional and statutory duties in the premises, and the way the proposed
plebiscite is to be funded, may not be within the contemplation of the
Constitution and the provisions of the election laws.

The second ground of movants deserves
scant consi­deration.  To begin with, it
is based on the erroneous factual premise that Our
decision was based only or mainly on a grammatical analysis of the phrase
“an election” as exclusively signifying only one plebiscite under any
circumstances.  The truth of the matter
is that the Court did not merely read and interpret the constitutional
provision in question, but went further and construed it, by going behind the
actual words used in the provision and ascertaining the purpose and in­tent of
die framers of the Constitution.  It was
on this basis that We held that there can be no
piece-meal sub­mission of amendments proposed and to be proposed by the
Convention.  Nothing in what We said
denies the possibility that the phrase “an election” may compre­hend
more than one plebiscite; what We held in effect was that as between two
possible interpretations, the one more consistent with the spirit of the
provisions, is that which proscribes piece-meal submission before the whole
draft of the new Constitution or all the amendments to be proposed by the
Convention have been finally approved by that body, considering that before
that there could be no safe frame of reference for in­telligent voting,
specially because the particular amendment proposed is subject to many
undefined reser­vations which it is in the power of the Convention to approve
at any time before or after the ratification of their final handiwork.

As to the third ground of intervenors‘
motion for reconsideration, suffice it to say that it is ob­vious that movants have confused wisdom of the ques­tioned action
taken by the Convention with the wisdom of the provisions of Section 1 of
Article XV of the Constitution which is applicable thereto.  What We discussed in
Our decision is not whether or not the Convention acted wisely; We simply held
that for the reasons given in the decision, We see wisdom in the construction
that piece-meal submission, before all the proposed Constitutional amendments
as a whole have been approved, is not allowed by the Constitution.

Finally, movants contend that the
proposed amend­ment in question does not need any frame of reference because it
refers solely and only to the reduction of the voting age.  As already indicated earlier in this
resolution and as discussed in the decision, We con­sider
movants‘ position to be a shortsighted view.  The right to vote is not as simple as it
might appear to be when considered in relation to the form of government, the
fundamental principles and the educational policies, inter alia, that the other amendments to the Constitution
may adopt and pursue.  Besides, We
reiterate that in the way the proposal is worded, read together with the
reservations tacked to it by the Convention thru Section 3 of the questioned
resolution, it is too much of a speculation to assume hat exactly the amendment
would really amount to in the end.  All
in all, as already pointed out in Our discussion of movants‘ first ground, if this kind of amendment is allowed,
the Philippines
will appear before the world to be in the absurd position of being the only
country with a constitution containing a provision so ephemeral no one knows
until when it will be actually in force. 
Incidentally; in this connection, the writer of this resolution is
persuaded that had the Convention clearly and definitely provided that the
proposed amendment was intended solely to enable 18 to 20-year- olds to vote in
the plebiscite for ratification or rejection of the Constitution as to be finally
amended by the Convention and proposed for ratification, his vote now could
have been in favor of respondents.^[5]

In the end, We see no plausible reason
to alter the judgment in this case.  As We see it, the consti­tutional provision in question presents
no doubt which may be resolved in favor of respondents and intervenors.  We do not believe such doubt can exist only
because it is urged that the end sought to be achieved is to be desired.^[6]
Paraphrasing no less than the President of the Constitutional Convention of
1934, Claro M. Recto, let those who would put aside,
invoking grounds at best controversial, any mandate of the fundamental law
purportedly in order to attain come laudable objective bear in mind that
someday somehow others with purport­edly more laudable objectives may take
advantage of the precedent and continue the destruction of the Constitu­tion,
making those who laid down the precedent of justi­fying deviation from the
requirements of the Constitu­tion the victims of their own folly.^[7]

WHEREFORE, the motions for reconsideration are denied.

Zaldivar and Castro, JJ., concur.

Concepcion, C.J., concurs in a separate opinion.

Reyes, J.B.L., J., concurs with
the opinions of Justice Barredo, Chief Justice Concepcion, and Justice Teehankee.

Teehanke, J., concurs in the opinion and that of the Chief Justice and add a separate concurrence.

Villamor, J., concurs in the above opinion and in the separate opinions of the Chief
Justice and Justice Teehankee.

Makasiar, J., concurs fully in the opinion of Mr. Justice Barredo
and in the concurring opinions of Chief Justice Concepcion
and Justice Teehankee.

Makalintal and Fernando, JJ., dissent in a separate opinion.

^[1]
The historical narration is based on details found in Aruego,
Know Your Constitution, Revised Edition, pp. 59-76.

^[2]
The continued existence of the Convention is in it­self the most pervasive
reservation, for it lies in its power, while it exists, to make any alteration
or modification it may conceive in any and all as­pects of the proposed
amendment, all present nega­tive intentions on the matter notwithstanding.

^[3]
The writer is personally more inclined to the view that the power lies
concurrently in the Convention and Congress, similarly, as in the case of the
pow­er of Congress sitting as a constituent assembly to call a constitutional
convention, as held in Imbong vs. Comelec, 35 SCRA 28, L-32432, Sept. 11, 1970.

^[4] Gonzales vs. Comelec, L-28??96, Nov. 9, 1967, 21 SCRA 774.

^[5]
Justices Zaldivar and Castro would join in this view
provided the plebiscite contemplated were held sepa­rately
from the election of officials.

^[6]
In sharing this conclusion, I have not failed to consider the appeals addressed
to the Court and to its members individually by scores of persons, young and
adult, singly and in groups, urging Us to reconsider
Our stand.  Unfortunately, even if the
Court dis­regarded the impropriety, in the light of traditional norms, of
appeals made to it outside of the pleadings and by persons other than the parties
directly invol­ved, I find that there are graver considerations that compel Us not to yield.  As I
see it, the Constitution is clear; if I had entertained any doubts as to its
meaning, I would have hesitatingly given the benefit thereof to respondents.  And since anyway, as suggested in the
opinion, there could be valid ways of pursuing and effecting the objective
which the questioned resolution intends to accomplish, why should the Sup­reme
Court sanction something that at best could be of dubious constitutionality It
is my considered opinion that while the financial costs of a separate
plebiscite may be high, it can never be as much as the dangers in­volved in
disregarding clear mandates of the Constitution, no matter how laudable the
objective.  As Justice Laurel, one of the
most distinguished members of the 1934 Constitutional Convention would put it,
“Of greater import than the damage caused by the illegal expenditures of
public funds as the mortal wound in­flicted upon the fundamental by the enforcement
of an invalid statute.” (People vs. Vera, 65
Phil. 56, at p. 89.) Conversely, no consideration of financial costs
should deter Us from adherence to the requirements of
the Constitution.

^[7] Claro M. Recto, on Our Constitution, Constitutional
Amendments and the Constitutional Convention of 1971 by Vicente L. Pastrana, p. 31.

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